


we face the fire

by limerental



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, M/M, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Sibling Incest, Thor (Marvel) Needs a Hug, seriously gratuitous angsting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 04:08:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13673961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/limerental/pseuds/limerental
Summary: "The navigation system sometimes goes on the fritz for days at a time and comes back online only after they drift a few degrees off course, enough to add weeks to their journey. The aft staircase is said to be haunted, and no one dares use it. There's a light-bulb out in one hallway or another. Morale is low, and the days seem endless and space too cold and the nights too empty and lonely and full of terrible dreams of a burning sky."Asgard burns, and Thor struggles to pick up the pieces. Loki helps, in his way. Slowly, they fumble their way forward among the stars.





	we face the fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prettynamesforuglythings](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=prettynamesforuglythings).



> Part of the Thorki Valentines Exchange hosted by [@thorkievents](https://thorkievents.tumblr.com/)
> 
> One of the prompts was for either a somber post-Ragnarok fic where Thor grapples with his grief with Loki's help or a whacky intergalactic road trip with shenanigans so... did a little of both but it ended up very heavy on the grief grappling.

_how long have I known you, brother_  
_hundreds of lives, thousands of years_  
_how many miles have we wandered_  
_under the sky, chasing our fear_  


_Day 0 -_

It all burns, the churning abyss of space rent to pieces by the sundering flames. Too bright to look at, harder still with his damaged eye oozing from its socket, but Thor makes himself stare deep into the blossom of light that is ( _was_ ) Asgard.

The blurry impression stays long after. 

He remembers as a boy bored at feasts or inane meetings or lectures, he had often stared into the torches lining the palace walls and, upon looking away, watched the dark spots before his eyes bounce across his surroundings, imagining them as mischievous creatures climbing on the vaulted ceiling, leaping onto a foreign dignitary's head, splashing into a large pot of stew. Those impressions faded within a few blinks, but this one?

Asgard's destruction splays across the narrow halls of the ship the refugees now call their own, then the medbay where his eye and other major wounds are seen to, and then the scant chambers he chooses for himself deep in the belly of the ship. He wonders, pouring himself a drink, if his intact eye has been damaged as well, if the final blast has ruined some of his vision. 

He wonders this again when he catches sight of his brother in the mirror.

“I'm here,” Loki says, and the hulking, black specter of Ragnarok hovers across his body. Thor goes to him, because he can't not. He pulls his brother into his arms and breathes deep.

When he closes his eye, the impression of Asgard glows white-hot, and he finds himself willing it to stay.

_Day 1 -_

When Thor wakes, what vision he has left has returned to normal, and there are many things to be sorted.

A subdued coronation, setting a course ( _Earth._ Thor thinks of Jane with a small pang in his chest. How far away that all seems.), inventorying the ship's hold, and tending to the many, many wounded. Drawing up a list of the dead and missing.

“You needn't worry yourself with that,” Loki says, appearing in the doorway of the council room. He had been missing all morning doing who knows what as Thor scrambled to start pulling the ragged edges of his people into some kind of cohesive whole, if that were possible.

The “council room” is really nothing more than a broom closet down the hall from Thor's own chambers, large enough for a handful of people to stand around a narrow table cluttered with lists and schematics, sequestered enough that few will hear the inevitable heated disagreements. There is no council left, not really. Of Odin's former advisers, none survive, having been some of the first to perish under Hela's rule. 

“These are our people, Loki,” Thor says, again scanning the list in front of him. Many names stand out for him, but some sit more cold in his gut than others. 

_Vandral_ , he reads. _Hogun. Volstagg._ Sif is still missing, but Thor finds himself unoptimistic that she will be found alive.

“These _were_ your people,” Loki says. “The ones who remain living have more need of your attention.”

Loki leans against the door frame, still wearing the same clothes he had on Sakaar. If Thor did not know better, he would look nonchalant, his remarks flippant, but as it is, Thor can see the red-rimmed eyes, the blue veins dark beneath them, the twitch of weariness in his jaw. 

Neither slept long the night before, but they didn't talk either. Simply passed a bottle back and forth in heavy silence until exhaustion crept up on them. Thor awoke still seated upright in his chair, Loki across from him with his head pillowed on a raised arm, drooling. In some other lifetime, he would have teased him for that and almost did. In this lifetime, he woke Loki with a firm hand on his shoulder and went out to face what was left of his kingdom.

With all the fresh pain, both physical and otherwise that Thor struggles neck-deep in, he finds it peculiar but not surprising how Loki's choice of “your people” versus “our people” sinks him just that little bit lower.

“Loki--”

Heimdall returns just then with news from the ship's hold, and Thor forgets whatever he was going to say. There are rations to be planned and supplies to be distributed. There is a vast vacuum of space ahead of them and months until they reach Earth.

Time enough to find the right words and, perhaps, to heal.

_Day 4 -_

A few days after Asgard's destruction, Loki returns to Thor's quarters. It is night, or the ship's equivalent of night. Space has no solid frame of reference for time, and so they make do with an abstraction of night and day, the lights throughout the ship dimmed low. Thor is reading a written report from Heimdall of the day's occurrences, and when he looks up to rub the dryness from his good eye, Loki is standing in the room.

“Are we going to speak about things now?” Thor asks.

“No,” says Loki as he settles into the armchair he had occupied that first night. “Pass the alcohol, brother.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I fear the pickings for accommodations were slim, and mine has some unfortunate neighbors. That rabble from Sakaar is utterly incapable of anything in the realm of the higher thought it would require to cease their yammering,” he says. “But no one would dare disturb you here.”

“You're disturbing me,” Thor says. With a sigh, he hands over one of the bottles of liquor and watches Loki's throat work as he takes a deep swig.

“You haven't been sleeping,” Loki says, eyeing the undisturbed bed.

“I doubt you have been either.”

“Presumptuous. I sleep like an infant.” The shadows beneath his eyes say otherwise.

“Mmhmm,” Thor hums. “I sleep on my feet.”

“You'll burn out.”

“Our people need me. No time for rest.”

“You'll be of better use to them with all your wits about you.”

“I've got plenty of wits all around me. All of them.” 

“Yes, clearly.”

“Thank you for the concern, Loki,” Thor says. “But there's no need for it.”

“Good, because I'm not concerned. It would just be unbecoming of a king to collapse from exhaustion in front of his subjects.”

“How sweet of you to worry over your dear brother.”

“I'm not--” Loki takes another deep swig from the bottle. “You're intolerable. I don't know why I bother.”

“Perhaps because you've missed me?”

Loki huffs. Thor extends a hand for the bottle, and Loki passes it to him. The liquor burns pleasantly down his throat, though it has no comparison to Asgardian liquor. 

“You forget that I have more experience with kingship than you do. You would do well to heed my advice.”

“Loki, you banished our father to Earth, allowing Hela to escape and all of Asgard to be--” Thor finds he cannot finish that sentence, the words tangling in his throat. He doesn't blame Loki, not really. He couldn't have known. “Forgive me if I don't wish to model my rule after yours.”

“Right,” says Loki, bristling. “See if I care when the Asgardians seek to replace you with a more capable monarch.” 

“Come to think of it, I am feeling pretty tired,” Thor says. “Good night, Loki. Nice talk.”

“Shut up and give that bottle back here, you insufferable idiot.” He takes another deep swig and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “This stuff is atrocious. That hag has hoarded all the best spirits.”

“Can't we have a single conversation without you insulting me or my comrades?”

“We aren't having a conversation,” Loki says. “And yes, if you or they ever stop being insufferable idiots.” He sets the bottle down with a clunk and shoves it Thor's way. Thor catches it by the neck just as it coasts off the edge of the table. “Plus, they aren't your comrades now. They're your subjects.”

“They're my comrades,” Thor insists. “Everything is not as it used to be, brother. I am the king of nothing. We have no land, no resources. Our people are broken. Our relics are lost. Our legacy is-- is--” He breathes deep. He takes a long pull from the bottom and stops it, sets it back on the table. “Asgard is just dust. My kingdom is ashes.” 

Something crosses Loki's face, but Thor cannot name it. 

“Get some rest,” he says. “Melancholy doesn't suit you.” And he shimmers into darkness, perhaps never even there.

Wearily, feeling every ache in his bones, Thor stands, stumbles to the bed, and sinks deep into much-needed slumber.

_Day 5_

The next night, Thor is unsurprised to find Loki appear again in his chambers. Thor wants to bemoan the awful day he's been having and declare that he's just not in the mood for his brother's antics tonight, but Loki quiets him with a raised hand and settles in the chair across from Thor to look over Heimdall's reports for that day, a list of all the many ways his bedraggled kingdom is crumbling. The advice Loki offers is without insult, almost subdued.

And he appears again the next night. And again, the two of them settling into a quiet routine. It is not quite amicable, nowhere close to how it had once been, but having Loki by his side feels easy somehow.

Heimdall doesn't question him when he suggests that Loki join them for council meetings, but a small, knowing smile slips onto his face.

_Day 8 -_

The ship begins to settle, living spaces designated and provisions organized. Some begin to awaken from the hazy stupor that adrenaline and fear had forced them into, and always, no matter the corridor Thor walks, he can hear quiet sounds of grief from huddled figures and through thin walls. It feels wrong to intrude, knowing the ways they suffered in the weeks following Hela's invasion, weeks that went by in a blink through a portal for Thor. 

Some problems he does not feel well-suited to even begin fixing, so he focuses on others.

As it turns out, neither the slaves freed on Sakaar nor the Asgardians quite know whether the ex-slaves count as the King's subjects or not or how to deal with their presence on the ship. Thor encounters Korg distributing pamphlets in the empty hangar bay that now serves as the ship's main gathering place.

“Here you are, sir, I hope that you would consider joining my rebellion against this corrupt and illegitimate monarchy,” Korg is saying to a flustered Asgardian woman who holds a child close to her breast. “Meetings are held in that one corridor near the garbage chute. Light refreshments will be provided.”

“Korg,” Thor says, arms folded, and the Kronan turns and smiles broadly at him.

“Oh hey, Thor!” he says. “How would you like to join my rebellion against this corrupt and illegitimate monarchy?”

“Right, may I speak to you about that?”

The hangar is one of the only spaces on the ship large enough to comfortably accommodate all of the ship's residents at once with room to spare. The other being the hall where the coronation was held, though that was soon designated as a central overflow from the medbay for the wounded and dying.

Thor takes Korg by his pebbly arm and leads him to a more secluded corner of the hangar. He explains, attempting to be as straight-forward as possible, that Thor is the monarch Korg means to usurp and that if he or the others have any problems, they can simply talk with him about them. Same as any of the Asgardians could.

“Ah, ok,” Korg says. “Then, we shall establish an autonomous sovereign nation of our own choosing where all men and women and other such genders shall be free. And we shall usurp the monarchy and--”

“No, Korg, no monarchy usurping,” Thor says firmly. 

“But I made pamphlets.”

“Sorry, friend,” he says. “Maybe we can find you a nice corrupt government to overthrow when we reach Earth.”

Later that day, Thor finds a pamphlet titled “Join Us in the Establishment of a Free Autonomous Collective to Supplant the Yet Unknown Dictators Ravaging the Foreign Planet Earth” shoved under his doorway. 

Thor finds himself smiling despite himself. Yes, there are some small things that he can set right. Solving one problem at a time maybe he can mend what has broken. Stich by painful stich.

_Day 10_

When Banner returns (in a struggle that leaves an entire hallway dented in alarming ways), Thor breathes a sigh of relief. So he hasn't cursed his friend to a lifetime of imprisonment within the hulking beast's body.

He finds Banner sitting cross-legged with Valkyrie in the hangar, a woolen blanket draped across his shoulders, hands cupped around a mug of soup that billows steam into his lowered face. He looks battered and a little shaky but whole.

“Really, you should get checked over by a medic,” Valkyrie is saying, but Banner waves a hand.

“No, I'm fine, I feel fine,” he says. “I've had worse.”

“It's good to see you, Banner,” Thor says. He hesitates only a moment before sitting with them.

“Hey man, I heard you're the King now,” Banner says with an easy smile. “Congrats.”

“A king with a ruined kingdom, yes.” He clasps a hand on Banner's shoulder. “Which would have been no kingdom at all without your bravery.”

“Thank the Hulk, not me.”

“The Hulk didn't make that jump to the Bifrost,” Valkyrie says. Thor has only seen her in glimpses since the coronation, often helping the medics or distributing rations or mediating disputes between the ex-slaves. The stuffy, recycled space air gives her hair a bit more frizz than normal.

“Do you think he'll return?” Thor asks.

“Yeah, for sure. He thinks the ship's pretty boring though,” Banner says. He blows on his soup and takes a sip. “It feels really different this time. I can sense him right beneath the surface, but it's not... it's always felt... hostile. But it's different now.”

“Everything's different now,” Thor says. 

_Day 13_ -

The Hulk returns a few days later, shredding his borrowed clothes to ribbons and likely leaving a group of Asgardian children with some terrible mental scarring. He slips easily back into Banner after a few hours. A very naked Banner who shivers in the middle of the very crowded hangar.

That night, when Thor tells Loki of the spectacle, his brother looks thoughtful.

“There may be something I can do,” he says.

Thor seeks out Banner's chambers and offers him a pile of neatly-folded clothing.

“My brother has magicked these to grow as you do,” he says. “To avoid any further uh... incidents.”

Banner flushes but accepts the gift. 

“I guess I owe him a thank you,” he says. “So that's a thing now? Loki being a good guy?”

“That may be an exaggeration,” Thor says. “But in time I think...” He lets himself trail off, because he is doubtful and thinking too deeply on the possibilities ignites a pang of sorrow in his chest at the inevitable betrayal that will come in time. Though Loki is still here, against all odds. Even knowing the less than warm welcome that awaits him on Earth, he stays. And there are small moments where Thor thinks that maybe they are yet traveling on the same path.

“Yeah... it's going to be ok,” Banner says. 

Thor, feeling as though at any moment the powerful weight of his grief and uncertain future may overpower and force him deep enough to drown, simply nods.

_Day 14_ -

His routine becomes this as the days go on:

In the mornings, the lights click on all over the ship to mark the artificial rising of the sun, and Asgard blinks groggily awake. Thor takes his breakfast in the main hangar with the rest, refusing to have it brought to his chambers. He cups his hands around a warm bowl of something. Space is cold and the ship full of metal that saps the warmth right out of him.

Sometimes as he sits among his people, usually with Banner and Valkyrie yammering on beside him, Loki nowhere to be seen, he pauses to watch them.

His people all sit cross-legged in small groups, eating their breakfast and telling stories. A group of young women braid each other's hair. A mother nurses an infant and shushes him with a hummed song as he fusses. An old Asgardian lullaby, one his mother also sang long ago. Gaggles of children run full-tilt through the hangar, ducking and leaping to avoid crashing into the seated adults. Some stop some distance away when they spot Thor and whisper together, squeaking and taking off again when he smiles at them. 

Thor cannot help but notice their demographics. How he sees ten women's faces for every one man's, both often elderly. Their battle-fit men fell facing Hela and many of their women also. For every face he sees there is a fallen brother, cousin, friend, son.

The freed Sakaar slaves, an odd mix of alien species some of which Thor cannot even name, stick mostly to the outskirts of the gathering, often gambling or bickering or loudly telling tales of the Battle of Asgard. The Hulk joins them sometimes, laughter booming. Korg is busy writing a song in commemoration of the battle which he has entitled “The Brilliant and Terrible Conflagration of Assberg”, though it carries no consistent tune or theme that Thor can recognize, mainly gibberish. 

Every morning after breakfast, he next visits the medbay. Dozens of beds have been rolled out in the room where his coronation was held, some with sheets strung up for privacy. The lights are dimmed here, whispers and quiet moans echoing off the tall ceilings. The healers flit from person to person, heads ducked. Thor visits each bed and asks after their condition. 

Many of the most sorely wounded are recovering now, though a sickness has broken out and spread. Some shiver, teeth chattering while behind grey eyelids their eyes twitch with fever dreams. Thor lays a hand on a clammy forehead.

“I hope to fight beside you again on the field of battle, friend,” he whispers. “Or shall Valhalla take you.” If Valhalla has not been sundered along with Asgard. Faded into dust along with the Allfather. Perhaps the spirits of their dead shall now wander the numberless stars.

Heimdall is already waiting in the council room when Thor arrives for their morning meeting. Thor rarely sees him about the ship, but he's always on time and always well-informed of even the most minuscule details of the ship's goings on. 

Loki arrives a few minutes late, drinking from a thermos of hot tea and hovering while Thor and Heimdall bend over the council table. He interjects opinions from time to time. Sometimes Banner joins them when there's something technical to parse out, sometimes Korg wanders in to relay some message from the freed slaves, sometimes various Asgardians appear with suggestions or complaints, and sometimes there is arguing, sometimes there is strained silence.

The hot water never functions right in the starboard compartment. The cooks serve the same rehydrated vegetable too many days in a row. The walls are thin, and the neighboring children are rowdy. The ex-slaves block the hallways to watch particularly riveting matches of some kind of alien board game and are exposing the children to gambling and foul language. Some of the sick in the medical wing are getting sicker. 

The navigation system sometimes goes on the fritz for days at a time and comes back online only after they drift a few degrees off course, enough to add weeks to their journey. The aft staircase is said to be haunted, and no one dares use it. There's a light-bulb out in one hallway or another. Morale is low, and the days seem endless and space too cold and the nights too empty and lonely and full of terrible dreams of a burning sky.

Each day after the meetings, Thor walks the halls. The Asgardians are slowly transforming the stark hallways of the ship into something softer and more familiar, bits of fabric from the Grandmaster's stash sewn together into elaborate tapestries, shiny baubles and beads hung from pipes and trailing from doorways. He shows a handful of wide-eyed children how to fold a paper airplane, something Darcy had taught him eons ago. He smiles at a group of young girls, and to his amusement, they visibly swoon. He encounters Banner losing horrendously at a game of Sakaarian checkers. He replaces a light-bulb and checks the aft staircase for ghosts.

He pauses at a wide bank of windows to look out into the stars. If they travel far enough away at the right speed, faster than light, it could be possible to still see Asgard shining whole in the night sky. If they just kept that distance away forever, it would seem as though it never was rent to pieces before their eyes.

At dinner, the cooks bring out casks of wine and other spirits from the seemingly endless supply in the hold. Inevitably, someone begins to sing and then there is dancing and sloshing booze and drunken merriment and feasting as much as they can, but at some point in the night, the singer switches to a ballad that echoes with haunting vibrato in the vast space. No eye stays dry. A healer stands and reads an update on the wounded and dying. An old man recites a somber poem about soldiers marching home from a hard-won battle. A baby begins to wail.

Each night, Heimdall brings him a written report of the day's occurrences, mundane or not. Most days, the list is the same as the next and brief. He skims the list alone in his chambers until Loki appears, sometimes through the door and sometimes in a shimmer of light. 

The brothers sit across from one another in conversation or in silence. They never quite talk about the things they should, not about their losses or their history or what awaits them on Earth.

Sometimes, Loki slips into bed beside him, curled face to face like they used to sleep as boys, like parentheses. Sometimes, Thor stays awake to watch Loki's chest rise and fall, remembering the way a spear had once pierced it, the way it had stilled with a last few gasps in his arms.

In the mornings, the lights click on to mark the artificial rising of the sun, and Thor wakes alone.

_Day 21 -_

One morning, a regular strategy meeting in the council room is interrupted by Valkyrie, out of breath with stray hairs coming loose from her braids, who quickly darts inside and, of all things, squats to duck beneath Thor's cloak.

“I'm not here,” she says, and a moment later, the doorway fills with green. The Hulk begins to shove his way inside, the metal frame groaning ominously. Loki sidesteps behind Thor.

“Nononono, NO! Hulk, remember what we talked about?” Thor shouts, and the massive brows crumple in thought. 

“Yes, Hulk very careful,” he grunts and eases back out the doorway, leaving the metal only slightly dented. Many of the ships doorways are in a similar shape or worse. “Hulk gentle.” To demonstrate, he pats the door frame with a flat palm as if soothing an animal, managing to warp it further. 

As expected, he's seeking Valkyrie, and Thor assures him that no, sorry, he hasn't seen her recently, her hair tickling the backs of his knees. As the Hulk lumbers off, Valkyrie shoots to her feet and straightens her clothing. Thor looks from her to Loki to Heimdall, bewildered.

“What was that about?”

“It would seem that our hulking friend harbors certain growing... affections,” Heimdall says.

“He _what_?” Loki hisses.

“Oh, that is disgusting, that is completely-- no,” Thor moans.

“I'm sorry could you repeat that? He _what_?”

“Terrible images in my head currently, thank you, Heimdall.”

“Oh, be quiet,” Valkyrie says, looking flustered. “It's not like that. It's... sweet actually. But you know Hulk, he doesn't half ass anything.”

“Oh no, please don't tell me he is _full assing_ \--”

“Shut up, Thor,” she snaps. “He's just a bit enamored is all. I'm hoping it will blow over.”

“You can't avoid your problems forever, Brunnhilde,” Heimdall says. 

“Fuck you, it's my only coping mechanism, and I sure can.”

“I thought drinking was your only coping mechanism,” Thor says. Honestly the idea of Hulk pursuing anyone is absolutely humorous as much as the end goal of that pursuit is very, very disturbing to think about. “Agh, I do not appreciate being afflicted by these images, Valkyrie.”

“It's you imagining that shit, mate.” Valkyrie huffs and draws a flask out of a pocket to take a deep swig.“And clearly, I drink to avoid my problems. This being a pretty fucking big problem.”

“Pretty fucking big is correct. Trust me, I have seen certain things the likes of which would have you cowering in fear for your safety if you only--”

“Thor, you really really do not have to constantly remind us of the Hulk's penis,” Loki says, because he really really doesn't.

“Hey, it's relevant to the conversation!”

“The Hulk's--” Valkyrie seems to realize what she is saying and how easily sound carries on this damn ship and lowers her voice to an angry whisper. “The Hulk's penis is not relevant to the conversation.”

Heimdall's rumbling laughter fills the small room, and Thor finds himself laughing as well, the first genuine humor he has felt in ages. It feels strange in his chest, mixing with the heaviness twisted there. 

He happens to meet Loki's eyes, Loki who is also laughing, and the look they share is one straight from their childhood. It may as well have been a late night in an Asgardan tavern, their amusement inspired by Volstagg's floundering attempts to woo the burly barmaid or by Vandral soliciting yet another tavern brawl (which of course they leapt into soon after), or by Lady Sif intoxicated to the point of hiccuping through every attempted sentence until she fumed in silence while they laughed. 

All gone now, he thinks, and if his laughter aches more like sobbing, perhaps only Loki notices, a hand clutching tighter to Thor's shoulder than need be.

_Day 26-_

The food in the galley of the ship, previously one of the Grandmaster's cargo vessels, could last for a thousand journeys to Earth and back, but there is the issue of fuel. After nearly a month adrift, their supplies are dwindling, and Earth does not seem any closer.

“This planet here may welcome us,” Heimdall says, leaning over a map of the nearby quadrant spread across the council table. “Though this ship requires a grade of fuel that is rare in this star system. Their welcome will not come cheap.”

“Even for the Ruler of the Nine Realms?” Loki asks. Referred to that way, Thor remembers the shattered ceiling of his father's throne room, the nine realms bathed in blood.

“Perhaps especially not, in that case.”

“I won't be approaching any planet using that title,” Thor says. “Not when I'm scarcely the ruler of even one realm.”

“Then subterfuge may be wiser,” Loki says. “We'll need disguises.”

And so, some time later, Thor steps onto a crowded street on the edge of a foreign marketplace, followed closely by Valkyrie and a dark-haired woman dressed lavishly in golden silks. He stops to adjust his blocky helmet, feeling as though he can see almost nothing through the slats in the visor.

Trees line the narrow street, their roots tangled in the cobblestone and spheres of light winking in their boughs as evening settles. The scent of food cooking wafts from nearby stalls, and all around them is the hum of amiable chatter and music from costumed street performers.

“Quit fiddling,” Loki says, her voice sharp. She walks upright and poised, the perfect imitation of a wealthy young beauty seeking supplies for the remainder of an interstellar jaunt. Valkyrie walks beside her, playing the part of the lady's veiled handmaiden, though Thor knows how many knives bristle beneath her robes. She and Hulk had somehow worked out whatever strange and hilarious thing had occurred between them, and Thor had had a hell of a time attempting to gently convince him that his presence was better needed on the ship and not on an espionage mission.

“I can't see a damned thing,” Thor says and fiddles some more with his helmet. Loki rolls her eyes. “And I still think you should have stayed with the ship.”

“Who's the better liar, brother?” Loki asks and strolls forward up the street, not looking back to see if they'll follow. The lights in the trees shimmer on the silks that cascade down her body and flutter in a breeze. The garments seem to reveal more skin than they obscure, chosen from the Grandmaster's stash of elaborate and impractical costumes. Loki wears them naturally, just as naturally as she wears this form, and Thor finds he can't look away.

“Whatever, let's hurry,” Valkyrie says, muffled by her veils. “Bonding banter can happen later, boys, I'm about to sweat my tits off.”

“If Heimdall was right, the location should not be far from here,” Thor says, and Loki gives him a look over her shoulder.

“What did I say about names?” She raises an eyebrow. Thor has already forgotten the code names he's meant to use. His place in this is as Lady Loki's armed muscle, meant not to speak unless spoken to. Thor wonders if all this deception is truly necessary or if Loki is simply making a show of it.

They find the establishment easily enough, a hole-in-the-wall bar with a menacing looking bouncer standing outside, his multiple tentacles curled around a truly massive gun. Loki leans close to sweet talk their way in, her lips nearly brushing against the creature's grey-skinned face which abruptly flushes a rainbow of colors.

Inside, there is less noise than on the street, only a handful of patrons leaning on the bar nursing dark liquid. The bartender looks up as they enter and squawks out the daily specials, beetle-like head shining.

“There,” Loki says and stalks-- no, sashays, across the room. Thor and Valkyrie follow. Heads turn, a quiet murmur spreading among the patrons, and a man lounging at the bar makes an appreciative noise deep in his throat and swivels his bar stool to face them. Thor's fingers tighten on the hilt of his sword, but he stills himself as Loki approaches the man and presses close beside him.

This must be the man Heimdall had seen, a trader who had recently come into possession of several thousand gallons of the fuel their ship requires, no doubt siphoned from a passing fleet. Of course the Grandmaster's ship turned out to be incredibly high-maintenance, the appropriate high-grade fuel difficult to find at anything but exorbitant prices. Asgard's wealth is no more. They must barter here with what little they have. 

So be it, Thor thinks, hearing Hela's voice in the throne room. “Where do you think all this gold came from?” Most of that is dust now.

What Loki says to the trader, Thor cannot guess, but in short time, it's all been sorted. The trader radios to his crew to begin fueling their vessel and takes the offered gold pieces with greedy eyes. Loki had planned on the currency being faked as well, but Thor would not allow it. Better to be rid of the last of their stolen riches than cling to a tainted legacy.

Back on the street, Valkyrie nudges Loki in the ribs. “That confirms how you won the Grandmaster's favor then,” she says. “I mean, I'd heard the rumors, but I knew better than to trust anything I heard on Sakaar.”

“Mind your tongue, cur,” Loki says.

“Well that doubly confirms it, _m'lady._ ”

“Hold on,” Thor says. “Confirms what?”

“Confirms nothing,” says Loki.

Valkyrie pauses at a street vendor to buy a piece of skewered mystery meat. 

“Come on, Thor, are you really that daft?” she asks, waving the stick at him. “Loki has _quite_ the mouth on him.” And Thor is not so daft as to miss those implications.

That night on the ship, Loki takes so long in showing up that Thor begins to think he's not coming. He is considering giving up and retiring for the night when there's a brief knock at the door. Loki steps inside without waiting to be let in. His hard lines and sharp angles have returned, dark hair no longer flowing in waist-length rivulets, no rosy flush to his cheeks or wet sheen to his lips. 

He thinks of the bouncer's multi-colored blush as Loki leaned close, of the appreciative look in the trader's eyes, of the Grandmaster's twisted smirk. Only after a beat of silence does Thor realize that he's been staring at his brother with brows drawn together. 

“Don't hurt yourself,” Loki says and settles into his chair. “You're clearly taxing your poor oaf brain.” 

“You're late,” Thor says. “Did you get tangled in that ridiculous costume?”

“That ridiculous costume bought us months worth of fuel for a quarter of the price.”

“I thought it simply a disguise.”

“A disguise with perks.”

“That trader certainly seemed to think so,” Thor says, and Loki quirks an eyebrow.

“I didn't take you for a man of such delicate sensibilities, brother.”

“No part of me is delicate,” he insists. “Especially not my sensibilities.”

“But you disapprove.”

“The Grandmaster's favor,” Thor says. “Was it as Valkyrie said? You earned it with your... wiles?”

Loki looks at him, head tipped with appraisal.

“I am not a harlot,” he says, which is not quite an answer. 

“But you would let men believe you are?”

“Men will believe of me what they believe. It has been so all my life,” Loki says. “Odin believed me his charity case, and Frigga believed me her son. If men believe me a simple whore, so be it.”

Thor quiets at that, feeling suddenly the weight of everything that has occurred between them. Less than a decade has passed since it all shattered, only a blink of an eye for beings such as them, but Thor feels as though centuries have elapsed. Since he watched Loki falling into the abyss, since the invasion, since the gasped apologies in his arms, even since the ocean cliff-side, the rippling distortion of a portal cleaving the charged atmosphere. 

“And me?” he asks finally, voice pitched low, and Loki's face lines with confusion.

“What?”

“What do you think I believe of you?”

“Something foolish, I assume,” he says, and there is an odd quality to his voice. The dimmed cabin lights leave most of his face in shadow. His mouth is a thin line, his eyes unreadable. His dark hair hangs in loose tangles, and Thor feels the inexplicable urge to brush it behind his ear, to tip his chin up and just look. As if a clearer view of Loki's face may allow him to see into his mind and better puzzle out his thoughts.

Would Thor see a reflection of his own fears and desires? An echo of the desperate realization that Loki is the only stable foundation he has left in this world? A confirmation that they still orbit each other in strange ways that they have since boyhood and always will? 

“Loki,” Thor says but cannot think of any way to express the feeling that snags in his chest. Perhaps Loki cannot either. Perhaps he also senses the impossible heaviness between them, the half-deaths and the words sharpened to wound, all that they once knew swallowed in a raging inferno, drifting now in fragments through blackest space, merely ash.

_Day 27-_

Loki, for reasons that are his own and that Thor can only guess at, does not come to his chambers for many nights after that. Thor busies himself with his routine, with caring for his people and solving the problems that he can. Loki joins them in the council room still, but otherwise Thor does not see him, cannot find him when he looks.

At night, he lies awake listening to the hum of the ship's engines. He imagines he can hear his people settling down for the night in their bunks, the small sighs and rustles of slumber, someone humming a lullaby. When he sleeps, he dreams of Asgard on fire, towering clouds of smoke shot through with lightning, a figure enveloped in the flames and Thor reaching, stretching his fingers and just brushing the edge of a cloak as Loki turns and falls away into the gleam of twisting nebulae below.

He wakes in cold sweat, heart rate thunderous, and each night, it is the same. 

_Day 39-_

Loki is sitting at the table when Thor returns from dinner. He stops in the doorway a moment, then strides across the room and sits in his usual chair.

He searches Loki's face for a long while. 

Across the table, Loki folds his hands together and holds still, maybe searching Thor's face also, maybe waiting.

“What do you want?” he asks. Loki leans back in his chair and examines his fingernails, attempting indifference.

“The Sakaarians have invented a new drinking game,” he says. “I can scarcely hear myself think.”

“Where have you been?”

Loki doesn't answer. The silence stretches. The many things unspoken between them feel almost palpable in the still air of the cabin, and it would be easy to let them lie as they always have, to open up another bottle of spirits and drink them away. But Thor finds he has grown weary of it, too weary to staunch the spill of words.

“I still think the world of you, brother,” he begins. Loki seems to startle, not expecting Thor to speak.

“You--”

“We are forever bound on the same path,” he says. He has rehearsed the words in his head many times while staring nightly at the dark ceiling, and they tumble out of him now. “I didn't know it on Sakaar, but I do now. We may be very different, you and I, but something tells me that some part of us is the same. Maybe especially now.”

Loki's expression doesn't shift, wholly impenetrable. “What changed your mind?” he asks.

“Before all of this, I saw Ragnarok in dreams,” Thor says. “Immense flames consuming Asgard whole. Not even rubble left to dig through to count our dead.” He remembers how sure he had been that that end could be averted, that like always, the battles would end with Asgard unscathed. “I can still see it when I close my eyes. It all burning. The awful fires blotting out the stars.” 

Thor takes a ragged breath and finds he is crying. “And I could not prevent it. If Asgard is a people, then how many did I fail? How many warriors and friends fell at Hela's blade? How many--”

Thor chokes, pushing his chair back from the table and moving to pace across the room and back. Electricity sparks down his arms into the pads of his fingers with painful jolts, and the tension crackles in the air, humming with it as he turns on Loki. He sits composed, hands folded, legs crossed, but his eyes are soft and slightly wet, a look Thor has seen only glimpses of for many years.

“And you, brother,” Thor continues. “Sending you into that treasure room was sending you to die. And I watched Asgard burn knowing I may have to mourn you once more. I have borne that before and perhaps I could again, but Loki, you are a part of me. You--” The sobs become too much, and he can barely breathe. Static discharges with pops and cracks in the stale cabin air. “You have to know that I wish nothing more than to have you by my side for all time.”

There is a long silence.

“Eye,” Loki says finally.

“What?”

“You said 'I can still see it when I close my eyes'. But from where I'm sitting, you've only got the one now.”

“You bastard,” Thor says with a wet laugh that catches in his throat. He swipes at the tears with his knuckles and tries to smile. “Can't you ever take anything seriously?”

“You'd get bored if I did,” Loki says.

“Oh, shut up.”

“I didn't take you for a skald,” he says softly. Loki is standing, fingers trailing on the table as he walks around it to face him. “A bit melodramatic for my tastes though.” He draws close. Stray dark hairs flutter with errant static. Thor always forgets how close in height they are, about the small touch of green in his eyes. “I'm here,” Loki says. “For as long as you can bear it, I am here.”

When their lips meet, Thor expects a shock of sparks, but instead, the electricity in the air and inside him dissipates at once, leaving a hollow ache, a need. Thor's hands move to cup each side of Loki's jaw and then tangle in his hair. He just breathes, just kisses Loki again and once more, new tears wetting his cheeks. 

When finally he pulls back, he presses their foreheads together, panting.

“Loki,” he whispers, his voice very small.

“Hush,” Loki says and embraces him. The grief wells up over him in a rising tide and crescendos, and Thor cannot breathe for the painful sobs hitching in his stomach.

He presses his face into Loki's neck and weeps, and that is how they sleep that night also, intertwined and without dreams.

_Day 40-_

Thor wakes curled up against Loki with a throbbing headache and a crick in his neck.

He groans and rolls over and nearly topples off the side of the too-small bunk. Beside him, Loki's back is pressed against the cabin wall, his eyes closed, hair a dark tangle on the pillow, arm pinned under Thor's body.

“It's about time you woke up,” Loki says with eyes still closed. “My arm may be a total loss by now though.”

“Ah sorry,” Thor says and shifts so Loki can free his numb arm. He blinks up at the glowing lights on the ceiling. “I slept in. What time is it?”

“Who in the Nine Realms knows on this dreadful ship.”

Temples throbbing, Thor flops back onto his stomach.

“Remind me not to cry myself to sleep ever again,” he says. “Feels like a hangover.”

“Well, you look awful.”

“So supportive, Loki, thank you.”

“You're most welcome.”

Slender fingers trail along the base of Thor's neck and into his scalp, the shorn hair still an odd sensation. Perhaps some kind of magic, a warmth tingles every place Loki touches. Thor hums low in his throat and turns his head to see Loki watching him, eyes half-lidded.

It feels like the most natural thing in the world to lean over and kiss him.

Loki's lips are dry and Thor's morning breath undoubtedly rank, but they kiss deeply anyway, bodies snug together and hands wandering. Where the night before was all tender sorrow, this is wanting, urgent. Thor rolls to straddle Loki's hips.

“Wait,” he pants, drawing back. Beneath him, Loki's brows crease. “Is this alright? This isn't too strange? It's not, I mean--”

“Thor,” Loki interrupts with a laugh and pushes himself up on to his elbows to meet him in another kiss. “Stop talking.”

His whole body feels warm, too warm, and he clutches at Loki's thin tunic and kisses down the exposed line of his neck. He can feel Loki's heartbeat there beneath the press of his lips. Desire burns low in his stomach, and he wants, _he wants_.

“But hold on,” Thor says, and Loki groans. “Why did you stop coming to talk with me at night?”

“You really want to talk about this now?”

“Clearly, I do,” he says. Loki rolls his eyes.

“I thought you disapproving,” he says. “Of my deception. Of my nature. I thought it better to take my leave of you before I outstayed my welcome. I needed time to think.”

“So then, last night--”

“A goodbye.”

Thor sits back, stomach plunging.

“You're planning on--”

“No, you fool,” Loki says, reaching to pull him back down and bring their lips together. He pulls back just far enough to speak.“It was meant as something of a goodbye, yes. All the arrangements were in place. I could have disappeared without a word but...” His hands cup Thor's jaw, thumbs brushing against his cheeks. “It seems I was... misguided.”

“Stay,” Thor says and plants small kisses on his forehead, his cheekbones, his eyelids. “Stay?”

“Yes,” Loki says and says again. “Yes, I'll stay.”

“Stay,” he gasps and can't stop kissing Loki's upturned jaw, his shoulder, his sharp clavicle, and then again his lips. Loki returns each kiss with equal fervor, repeating “ _yes, yes_ into Thor's mouth, his hair, the crook of his neck. His hands push under Thor's loose shirt and up the line of his back, scalding every place they touch. He has had no small number of bedfellows throughout the centuries but never have such small touches driven him to near madness, to such an eclipsing hunger. 

Each minuscule caress and kiss seems to carry an impossible weight and significance, and Thor wonders at it and at the pink flush to Loki's cheeks, his blown pupils, his mess of dark hair. He is so very alive and whole and within reach, and the truth of it sends his mind reeling. How many long years did he spend reaching helplessly for him and then mourning and reaching and mourning again? Perhaps a lifetime. Perhaps, as on Sakaar, the time passed differently in Loki's absence. Grief distilling the seconds into eternity. 

This is all I have left, he thinks and kisses Loki with the full weight of that knowledge. The feeling is part sorrow and part greedy possessiveness and part awe that he can have this at all. Asgard is rubble, Odin and Frigga snuffed out of the world like candle flames, his people limping through the stars on a stolen ship to an unknown future, and here is Loki in his bed, unscathed and uncoerced. Loki willing to stay. Loki standing at his side and giving inane advice about ship maintenance in an unglamorous council room. Loki whispering in the dark _”I'm here”_. Loki kissing him back like maybe similar thoughts command his mind.

The door to his chambers bursts suddenly open.

“Thor, you in here? You didn't-- oh, shit.”

Valkyrie skids to a stop in the doorway. Behind her, Banner gapes. Thor struggles to quiet his panting, one hand curled in Loki's hair, the other braced against his chest.

“You know they invented this wonderful thing,” Loki says, also out of breath. “It's called knocking.”

“Heimdall said you were preoccupied, but I didn't think he meant--” Valkyrie makes some kind of lewd gesture to represent what she and Banner had interrupted.

“Did he need something?” Thor asks. With reluctance, he climbs off of Loki and stands, trying to look somewhat kingly. 

“No, you were just late for breakfast, and we thought-- Well, we thought something,” Valkyrie says. “He could have better warned us, you know. That asshole.”

Loki remains sprawled out on the bed, single eyebrow raised as though challenging either of the two in the doorway to say anything. He makes no move to hide his arousal or the red marks on his bared neck and shoulder. Of course, Banner rises to the challenge.

“You're brothers,” he says. “Is that some kind of... I mean, are Asgardians chill with that kind of stuff?”

“No,” Loki says flatly. Banner continues to gawk, and Loki bares his teeth in a snarl that has him taking a step behind Valkyrie.

“Well sorry to interrupt, boys,” Valkyrie says. “Very sorry actually. Maybe getting laid for once would make Her Majesty less of an insufferable priss.”

“Repeat that at your peril, _hag_ ,” Loki says as he slips to his feet. His wild bedhead makes him appear slightly less imposing. 

“Oh, excuse my insolence, _my Queen_.”

After a brief skirmish where Thor has to physically restrain Loki from launching himself at Valkyrie with daggers drawn, he sends Valkyrie and Banner on their way, pulls on more appropriate dress, and goes to meet Heimdall in the council room down the hall.

“Good morning,” Heimdall says, and Thor tries very very hard to forget how much he's seen. Though the amused smile and playful glint in his faraway eyes doesn't exactly help.

“Right,” Thor says. “Let's get started.”

Loki slips into the room as they are poring over a star chart, comparing their estimated coordinates to the position needed to skirt the borders between realms and reach Midgard. He has combed his dark hair but odd strands still hover with static left over from the night before. Thor finds himself staring at the bruises on Loki's pale neck.

“Perhaps that's enough for this morning,” Heimdall says. “It won't be long until we reach Earth, and you two have much to talk about.”

But Thor and Loki don't talk, walking silently beside each other down the narrow hallways of the ship. The Asgardians who flit in and out of corridors and chambers nod to them as they pass. Somehow, his people have begun to feel at home here as much as they can. 

In some future age, there will be tales told of this journey through the stars. Perhaps they will keep this Ark as a relic and think fondly of the cluttered hallways and flickering lights. Thor certainly fears that this is just the easy part, that there is far worse to come.

The brothers stop at a bank of windows. The stars stretch out away from them to infinity. Perhaps one of them is Asgard, soon to wink into nothing. Perhaps one of them is Earth.

“Do you really think it's a good idea to go back to Earth?” Loki asks.

“Sure! They love me there,” Thor says, though he knows what his brother means before he clarifies.

“Let me rephrase: do you really think it's a good idea to bring _me_ back to Earth?”

He pats Loki on the shoulder with a smile. In under a week they'll be within communication range of Earth and then will be the hard part. But there is still time enough to solve those problems as they come. Time enough to try to parse through the things that have risen to the surface between them and maybe to continue what was interrupted this morning. 

For a moment, Thor imagines he can feel all of the heartbeats of every being on the ship, every tiny life that is in his care. It is a heavy weight, but he is carrying it and will continue to carry it until all is whole once more. Somewhere out in the stars, the specter of Asgard still glows. If Thor closes his eyes, he could still see it, threatening to blind. He doesn't close his eyes.

“Probably not,” Thor says. “But don't worry, brother, I've got a feeling that everything's going to work out.”

And the sky goes black with the approaching storm.

**Author's Note:**

> The title and opening stanza are from Brother by Lord Huron which I think fits their current dynamic so remarkably well. Find me on tumblr under the same name


End file.
